Crazy for Cornelia

In Chris Gilson's fairy tale of rescue and responsibility, the princess in the tower just happens to live on Manhattan's Upper East Side and control 25 percent of her family's investment bank. Trapped in her flaky debutante guise, Cornelia is in reality constrained less by breeding than by her father's tech-savvy, manipulation-happy protégé. Tucker Fisk, Crazy for Cornelia's diabolus ex machina, will stop at nothing to gain control of the blue-chip Lord & Company. All he has to do is trick the daughter of the house into marrying him before she's 21 and he'll be "thirty by thirty," in possession of $30,000,000 by the time he's 30. The only problem is that this evil genius has the ugliest of auras--or coronas, as Cornelia perceives them. For our young socialite is in fact an adept of Nikola Tesla, by her lights the true inventor of electricity. And she's determined to give the Croatian Edison his rightful place in scientific and social history.

Speaking of social, the new doorman at 840 Fifth Avenue is the novel's true class act, despite his lower-tier background. Kevin Doyle has been forced to take this post because his avocation as a neon artist has yet to generate any sparks. But from the first time he sees Cornelia, the two seem very much on the same wavelength. Will this scrupulous young soul be able to save her and her father from their moneyed illusions? Let's just say that one thing in particular gives Kevin a fighting chance:

His eyes pulled her in, a magnetic force drawing her gently toward him. Something about his gentle corona reminded her of an afternoon in her mother's arms. They had been at the beach when she was nine. The waves rolled over them, deliciously foamy and salty.... She realized that Kevin's corona matched the color of the sky that day. It had the texture of summer, arching over a world that felt the way life always should.

But if these lovers are ever to come together, they must first overcome a series of monsters intent on institutionalizing Cornelia and, irony of ironies, electroshocking her into wedlock with Tucker. Chris Gilson, a former adman, is well aware that there are 10 million stories in the naked city. In Crazy for Cornelia, however, he knows that a deft combination of only a few should yield him a rich and varied demographic. --Winnie Wheaton